The “greener” job will unfortunately not make its way to you by its own though. “Headhunters “might be calling you less and less and the job vacancies links might seem to be either drying up or futile to a large extend. 

Not only that, if you are a senior executive, do you even have an updated CV? Do you have a CV at all? Would it feel right attaching your CV to a job opening with hundreds of applicants racing to the link in the last 24 hours and who most probably are still few steps apart from you on the career ladder?

I would like to make a grand statement here: Exploring green jobs is not an act of disloyalty. Let that sink in.

As a professional you are not meant to stay in the same organization until boredom, redundancy or retirement keeps you apart. Here comes a certain time in your career when you outgrow workplaces, colleagues, bosses, and organization cultures. Guess what? This is in fact totally human, normal, and healthy. This is how knowledge is channeled and synergies are created indeed.

Throughout your executive career journey, you will inevitably experience at least one of the three kinds of career transitions

  1. A forced transition which often limits you to an undesirable change within your organization like a mediocre geographical change or a generous and heartfelt Thank you note.
  2. A no transition at all which is in a way a transition to a phase that pretty much resembles what I like to call a heart withering phase or the slow death zone. Tell me you’re a leader for the past endless years in the same place with no disruptive changes or extraordinary outcomes lately and I guarantee that every atom of you is suffering.
  3. A simulated and induced transition that happens only when you consciously and courageously take the decision to diagnose your career and decide on the way forward. A clinical career diagnosis exists by the way just like blood tests do.

Transition 3 is transition by DESIGN rather than by a DISASTER and is both the most uncomfortable and the most effective transition. 

I come from the stone age era (I am older than you think I am) where I got my very first job by applying to one of the ads posted in the corridor of my college and by circling ads in every newspaper my father got and calling on landlines that give you busy tones for hours and days in Lebanon. This isn’t what got me to my dream job back then. What did is printing a good dozen of my resumés on the slowest printer in the world, tucking them in a plastic folder, and literally barging in unannounced into companies and asking to either meet or schedule a meeting with the head of department I wanted to be part of.

Looking back at it now with the career consultant perspective I can definitely say I purposefully looked for my dream job as a fresh grad and it did work.

I will certainly not encourage you as a senior professional to either carry a CV folder or barge into a company. I will however encourage you to embody this spirit of actively looking for the next role you are aspiring at and to navigate correctly through the executive career transition guided by the right consultant. 


I often do have gullible executives raising eyebrows when I break the news of no alternatives or short cuts exist for landing their dream job but rather a structured transition program to propel the search journey and cross the chasm in a professional manner. 

They go: Do I have to go through all this? My favorite feedback will forever reverberate: Do you have a better option? 

If you don’t, flex those faith muscles and let’s have a chat.